Month: May 2006

Overpopulation, or Overconsumption?

Ward Sutton, who was much funnier when he was drawing cartoons that lampooned rock-n-roll culture, makes an extremely dubious point about overpopulation and the “culture of life” in this week’s “Sutton Impact.” In it, Sutton mourns the loss of greenspace and farmland in his hometown to “exurban” housing developments, blames overpopulation and then mocks the right-wingers who want to ban contraception. While the effort to ban contraception is ridiculously puritanical and begs for mockery and outrage, I find it extremely hard to blame American urban sprawl on “overpopulation.” The great big land mass under the stars and stripes is a whopping 5.9 million square miles, while our population is – as Sutton points out – soon to be 300 million. That means that, on average, we have to squeeze about 83 people to each square mile. India, on the other hand, with its billion citizens, has to find enough living […]

Fascist Rock

One of fascism’s most insidious tendencies is to warp history with revisionist interpretations. The National Review’s recent list of the 50 conservative rock songs of all time is a contemptible attempt to claim protest music for the forces of reaction. Freedom is, indeed, slavery and rock is Republican if you believe these pinheads. I see no more than twelve actually conservative rock songs here (and that’s being generous with Sammy Hagar’s weenie complaint about the “nanny state,” “I Can’t Drive 55”). Some of the 50 are non-political songs given a right-wing spin by the magazine, like the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?,” an innocent song about dopey teenagers daydreaming about living together which National Review interprets as a paean to marriage and abstinence. My filthy mind interprets it as a post-coital parting of two teenage lovers who would rather spend the night together than sneak back home. Similarly, where […]